Some of the latest news. [news.nationalpost.com] Surprisingly this article does not seem to have many of the typical journalism errors when reporting a railroad incident. Much of the technical information seems to be coming from the Canadian Transportation Safety Board.

My comments/speculation:

1. I personally don't consider 1% to be a particularly steep grade for railroads, especially compared to 2.2% or more. But, 1% definitely demands respect because it can be disastrous, as many runaways have historically proven. You really can't rewrite the laws of physics.

2. Based on the grade the train was parked and typical railroad rules, I would expect that all the engine hand brakes would be applied (which won't do much more than hold the engines since they typically only apply to one axle). I would expect to tie down not less than 1 in 4 of the loaded cars, and then release the air brakes and confirm the hand brakes were sufficient to hold the train on a grade. Because this was a one person crew, I would expect the engineer to tie down five engines, presumably the empty buffer, and 18 of the loads. For those not familiar with tank cars, this is a substantial amount of work because they are not the easiest to climb on and off to access the hand brake wheel. And if you did not tie enough brakes the first time, it would be about a 1/4 mile hike just to start tying down more cars.

3. Leaving an engine running is common because the relieving engineer would not have to perform a new initial terminal/Class 1 air test on the train. It would be very time consuming for only the engineer to perform this air test by themselves. Restart engines, charge the brake system, make a brake application, walk the brake application to the rear of the train and back to the engine, walk the brake release and back releasing the handbrakes assuming the engine brakes would hold the train on the grade.

4. The whole issue of the engine fire and the firemen's actions including shutting down the engine does not affect the requirement that an unattended train must be properly secured by handbrakes. Similarly, a non-operating department employee being on-site does not change the requirement. I highly doubt that the firemen or other employees would have taken any action to release the handbrakes, nor would they have been responsible for determining that the hand brakes were applied.

It is my speculation based on the limited access to facts available, that the engineer, as sole train crew member, probably did not apply sufficient handbrakes to properly secure the unattended train against undesired movement. The train was being held static by a combination of some handbrakes, the engine air brakes and possibly a brake application on the train. Shutting the engine down due to the fire resulted in a failure of the air supply. Normal leakage would have slowly bled the main reservoir air off. If the engines were equipped with "spitter" type blowdowns, as many as 10-20 of them would have steadily drained the air off. There are some situations were the brake pipe and car reservoirs/cylinders will leak back through a dead engine. The loss of air left insufficient braking force by the remaining handbrakes to hold the train static.

It will be interesting to wait and see if any of mangled and burned pile of 20 or so end cars in the wreckage are sufficiently intact to provide evidence if the handbrakes were or were not applied. If some of the hand brake cans are intact, it might be obvious if there is any chain wrapped up or not.
The criminal negligence investigation suggests the idea that the runaway was the result of a failure to act responsibly, not anyone acting to release the brakes. If I recall, Canada has arrested, charged, tried and convicted train crew members before in fatal accidents for the failure to properly perform their duties.

I'm not sure what the fallout will be from this. I could see the requirement that any train left on the main track on a grade must be in the charge of an operating employee unless protected by a derail or equivalent arrangement. The tank car issue is problematic. Canada can't really require a different class of car unless the US goes along, and it may take years to get enough new cars in place to comply. You can't really expect a typical railcar to consistently survive a 60 mph derailment intact.